This Tableau portfolio project began as a personal exploration and quickly evolved into a deep dive into dashboard design, interactivity, and data visualisation best practices. It demonstrates my ability to create dashboards that are intuitive for multiple user types—executives, middle management, and general users—while showcasing advanced Tableau techniques
Exploring COVID-19 Data with Tableau
I chose COVID-19 data including cases, tests, deaths, vaccinations, and government restriction metrics. My goal was to create a Tableau KPI dashboard that allows users to explore trends, compare metrics, and gain actionable insights.
Currently, the project features one interactive dashboard, with plans to expand to additional views to showcase further Tableau analytics capabilities.
Key Tableau Techniques Used
- Parameters and Calculations – Dynamically adjust month-year selection and highlight corresponding bars.
- Interactive Highlights – Toggle government restriction line on/off.
- Conditional Formatting – Month-over-month (MoM) values color-coded green/red.
- Symbols and Visual Cues – Icons for cases, tests, deaths, and vaccinations.
Interactive Graph Features: Deep Dives
This section explores the five ways a user can interact with the main bar graphs, illustrating both technical implementation and user benefits
Graph 1. Bar and line graph with highlighted month-year, comparing to 'International travel controls'
- Useful for those users who want to deep dive into both areas regulation and KPI data over time and check for trends.
Graph 2. Bar and line graph with highlighted month-year, comparing to 'Workplace closing' protocol
- Similar to graph A, showing comparison to different restriction type
Graph 3. Bar and line graph without highlighted month-year, comparing to 'Workplace closing' protocol
- For those users who aren't interested in highlighting a specific bar related to the above KPIs. Especially useful for screenshotting for reporting purposes as it may cause some confusion
- Users can toggle this highlighted bar on and off via the filters on the left of the dashboard
- Designed for those higher executive reporting practices where the focus may be more on trends, rather than a specific month
Graph 4. Bar graph with highlighted month-year
- For those users who are not focusing in on the correlation between top KPIs and the Government regulations at the time
- Useful for looking at the top level KPIs and then focusing on the trend over time
Graph 5. Bar graph without highlighted month-year
- The most simplest view purely showing the trend of the KPIs over time. May be useful in high level reporting
Designing for multiple audiences
This dashboard balances the needs of executives, middle management, and general users.
- Executives: quick access to KPIs and trends that can be used in documentation or slides for Senior leadership discussions
- Middle management: Explore deeper correlations
- General users: Clear symbols and interactive toggles
Layout, hierarchy, and interactivity were carefully designed to make the dashboard intuitive and actionable
Tableau Best Practices Applied
- Use interactivity intentionally
- Prioritise layout and spacing
- Apply color and symbols meaningfully
- Highlight high-impact metrics while allowing exploration
- Conscious labelling to ensure they would be understood over long term
Explore the dashboard
You can interact with the Tableau COVID-19 dashboard here
Key Takeaways
This Tableau portfolio project demonstrates:
- Tableau dashboard design balancing usability and advanced interactivity
- Tableau KPI dashboard for multiple audiences
- Tableau interactivity using parameters, toggles, and conditional formatting
- Commitment to continuous improvement with plans for future dashboards
- Ensuring long term usage by placing a clear focus on accurate labelling and using calculated fields and parameters in a way that enhances the dashboard, instead of confusing it.
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